The Edison Blue Amberol records came out in 1912 and were far superior to the earlier wax cylinders. If you had one today, how could you play it? Easy.

If you think of records as platters, you are of a certain age. If you don’t remember records at all, you are even younger. But there was a time when audio records were not flat — they w… ...

It was recorded in 1888, 10 years after Edison had first done the tinfoil phonograph, by then recording on hard wax cylinders, and it worked much, much better than the tinfoil.

The first idea of a genuine talking-machine appears to belong to Thomas A. Edison, who, in 1875, took out patents upon a device intended to reproduce complex sounds, such as those of the human ...

This example of an Edison talking doll has a ceramic head, a metal body, and articulated limbs made from painted wood. Inside the torso is mounted a tiny phonograph bearing a brown wax record that ...

This article was originally published with the title “ The Manufacture of Edison Phonograph Records ” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 83 No. 25 (December 1900), p. 390 doi:10.1038 ...

It was recorded in 1888, 10 years after Edison had first done the tinfoil phonograph, by then recording on hard wax cylinders, and it worked much, much better than the tinfoil.

Music journalist Jonathan Scott explores the early history of recorded sound: from the first-known recordings in the 1800s to the most significant vinyl records of the 1940s.